Daily news and top headlines for broadband communications engineering and design professionals

Calix has lit up the state of Alabama’s first 1-gigabit service through a deal with Farmers Telecommunications Cooperative (FTC.) After launching last week, FTC, which is Alabama's largest member-owned telephone cooperative, is providing symmetrical 1-gig speeds to customers in DeKalb and Jackson counties.

Verizon will sell its wireline operations in California, Florida and Texas to Frontier Communications for $10.54 billion ($9.9 billion in cash and $600 million in assumed debt). Verizon will also lease the rights to 11,300 towers and sell an additional 165 towers to American Tower for $5 billion.

Apple is reportedly reviving discussions with programmers about creating a streaming TV service. The company is in early stages of negotiations with programmers about securing rights to content, and has been demonstrating the ability to deliver TV, according to re/code.

Time Warner Cable has started notifying its subscribers in Dallas and surrounding areas that its TWC Maxx project, which includes the conversion to all-digital, will soon be underway. By early summer of this year, those Dallas area subscribers will be able to tap into speeds of up to 300 Mbps down with the reclaimed bandwidth from the analog-to-digital conversion.

Cablevision announced on Friday that Brian Sweeney would become the cable operator’s chief financial office effective March 1. Sweeney, who already holds the title of president at Cablevision, will succeed current CFO Gregg Seibert. Seibert will continue to serve as vice chairman of Cablevision where he will focus on the company’s long-term strategic and financial initiatives.

BabyFirst, which is a TV channel targeted at toddlers and their parents, has launched on Bright House Networks, the nation’s sixth-largest cable operator. The launch added 2.5 million Bright House Networks customers in Detroit, Indianapolis, Central Florida, Tampa, Birmingham and Bakersfield to BabyFirst’s distribution, which now stands at more than 50 million U.S. homes, in English and, via SAP, Spanish.

Sprint's latest plan for luring new subscribers is to occupy the remains of RadioShack.The long-struggling consumer electronics chain filed for bankruptcy protection Thursday. Part of its plan is for Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. wireless carrier, to open mini-shops in as many as 1,750 of RadioShack's remaining stores.

Few members of Congress appear willing to move toward a bipartisan update to the 80-year-old, law that top U.S. regulators say gives them the authority to regulate the Internet. That means that communications legislation written in 1934, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt was in office, will likely be used to regulate how Internet service providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast do business with content providers.

Chunghwa Telecom will be using Envivio’s Muse Ultra HD software to support two modes of 4K HEVC delivery to a wide range of devices: video-on-demand content delivered via unicast transfer, and NVOD through multicast to HwaCom set-top boxes.

Cablevision turned on its Wi-Fi-exclusive phone service providing unlimited data, talk and text. Monthly fees will be much lower: $9.95 a month for Optimum customers and $29.95 a month for everyone else. The company is currently supporting Motorola’s Moto G.

Charter Communications’ fourth quarter results were driven by robust video and advertising revenues, and a continued increase in data subscribers. Charter’s residential video subscribers grew by 3,000, as opposed to a loss of 2,000 a year ago, while it added 104,000 high-speed Internet customers in the quarter.

According to recent research by Parks Associates, 25 percent of the broadband households across the nation find an energy monitoring service “very appealing.” In more good news for cable operators that offer home automation services, 22 percent were interested in an appliance monitoring service while 26 percent found an HVAC monitoring service very appealing.

South Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co. has started domestic sales of high-end televisions powered by its Tizen operating system and plans to add washing machines, fridges and other appliances to the range of products that use the software. Samsung said sales of Tizen-powered ultra-HD TVs began Thursday in South Korea.

Netflix is expanding into Japan this fall, marking the first time that the Internet video service will be available in Asia. The move announced late Wednesday marks another step toward reaching Netflix's goal to stream video on Internet-connected TVs, phones, tablets and computer throughout the world.

Gureck will be responsible for research and development, merger and acquisition activity, concentration on market value and trends, continued development of strategic partnerships, and diversifying the company’s lines of business, the company said.